Thursday, October 2, 2014

The Art of Purging a Fridge

I am that person who freezes leftover roast turkey meat for turkey pot pie or turkey stew when the family is no longer turkefied tired of eating turkey leftovers.

I'll feed the kidlets yogurt for after school snack when I know the best before date is approaching.

I freeze the leftover loaf of fresh white bread from stew to use as garlic bread at a later date.

I partition meals so there's likely no leftovers because Mr Lannis is really the only one in our family who is, er, enthusiastic about leftovers. (At this point in our marriage I'm certain he's at least part garbage disposal.)

Hell, today? Today I'm going to make a pear crisp because the remaining half a bag of pears from our Good Food Box last month went soft already.

Point being: I plan around ensuring there is no food waste.

Our fridge is managed the same way I manage the rest of our household... I budget. I shuffle. I plan. I move things around and plan meals based on best before dates. I write up a tentative schedule of meals based on what we currently have, and shop to obtain the niggly bits necessary.

I am also the only one who cleans and purges.

Mr Lannis will keep food in the fridge too long, forever, in the hope it will become a rotten, fermented mess and will one day—after the crash of civilization during the pending apocalypse—make us relatively rich in his will-be-assumed gourmet tendencies.

You know what this week is? Mr Lannis? He's on afternoon shift right now.

What does that mean? Well, aside from meaning I need to keep seven kids from being noisy so he can sleep in in the morning, it means the sweep out of the fridge is about to happen.

Dun dun DUN!

That salad dressing that's three days past its date but Mr Lannis insists he might remember to use in the next week? Gone.

The 1" chunk of wrinkly, part-frozen, Spanish onion sitting within the confines of not one but two Tupperware containers in order to contain its stink fragrance? Gone.

The three bread loaf heel slices sitting in separate bread bags that everyone has abandoned? Okay, busted, I put those in the freezer because I'm hoping to devise a reason to use them (bread crumbs for tourtière is likely)...

That bottle of smokey barbeque sauce that no one in the house likes but someone (hint: not me) HAD to have? Oh yeah, you can bet that bad boy's rinsed down the drain...

So yeah. While I laud The Mrs' old weekly challenge of no food waste—there definitely comes a time when the fridge needs purging...